


From Crumbling Temples

by objectlesson



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Angst, Co-Parenting, Cultural Differences, Curtain Fic, Drinking, First Time, Found Family, Frottage, Happy Ending, Healing, M/M, Post-Canon, Religious Discussion, Ritual Armor Stuff, Slow Burn, Tenderness, We Play Fast and Hard with Canon in this House
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 17:46:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: You try your damnedest to burn it out, but Luke’s face sticks in your head. Lingers like a whiff of ozone, and no matter how hard you try to forget it when you close your eyes behind the visor of your helmet, there’s the haunting outline of his lips mapped out in your head like a constellation. His mouth. His eyes. His single bare hand, ever so gently cupped around Grogu’s body like heknewhow important it was to you that he be touched like he was precious.And it must have worked, because you let Grogu go with him. Maybe that’s why you can’t stop thinking about that moment—how it felt to hold unwavering and long sustained eye contact with a man for perhaps the first time in the whole of your lonely life.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker, Past Han/Luke - Relationship
Comments: 85
Kudos: 142





	From Crumbling Temples

**Author's Note:**

> Star Wars Fam I'm back!!! Some of y'all might remember me from my Han/Luke fics, but as you can see I'm boarding the Din/Luke train because man...this is all I've ever wanted. I love Han and Luke together so much but its suchhh a bittersweet pairing with an inevitable end, and even when I was in the thick of writing it I regarded it as one of those pairings that's just not sustainable as a long term thing without serious canon divergence. Plus I was always aching for Luke, who, in my head, is alone and heartbroken after Han inevitably chooses his sister over him. 
> 
> SO IMAGINE MY DELIGHT WHEN DIN DJARIN AND HIS LITTLE GREEN SON WALKED IN!! This is all I've ever wanted for him and I'm just. So Happy. I have many things to say, as evidenced by this fic which was supposed to be a PWP but ended up as a 14k character study on subject of life and growth and healing after a long stretch of rigidity and evangelicalism. It's think it's sort of angsty but I promise its got a very sweet ending. 
> 
> For those of you who haven't read my other Star Wars fic, a few notes:  
> -I love Star Wars but I play fast and hard with canon. I just throw the shit out I don't like and cherry pick a ton and will never, ever use the word "kriffing." My characters say fuck. Sorry.  
> -I do my research but only up to the point it serves the story I want to tell, so if you noticed inconsistencies in language or story (especially if it relies on having seen or read anything other than the original trilogy which is all I care about) don't bother mentioning it. This is only loosely canon compliant!  
> \- This story does not address the acquisition of the Dark Saber. Let's say Bo Katan just took it and she and Din decided to never tell anyone what happened on that ship or how she ended up with it. Or maybe she fought him and he convincingly acted defeated and gave it up. I dunno. He doesn't have it. He doesn't have to rule Mandalore. This is The Way. I decided.  
> -I did not put a warning for dysphoria because thats not how I perceive of Din's relationship to his armor/skin, but I do talk a lot about that and I can imagine it being upsetting or maybe just uncomfortable for people who do experience dysphoria, so read with caution. I have many idea sfor future fics where I want to go MORE into the armor (yes there will be a stone butch Din lesbian story at some point) but this does still touch on it so I just want to be forthcoming about how it might read. 
> 
> Ok I think those are the big things. I had a great time writing this and have MANY thoughts about these characters and much more to say so if people like this Ill probably write some one shots in the same universe. we will see. Thank you to my amazing beta who does not know a star war but still read this for me very kindly <3 To the rest of you, enjoy!

——-

The man— _boy,_ really—who whisks through the ship with Grogu under his arm makes it as far as the hangar deck before you catch up to him, breathless, labored exhalations burning and humid inside your helmet. “Wait,” you say, and he turns on his heel just short of boarding his X-wing, black cape dusting the ground like a shadow. “How will I find you again? If I want to speak to him?” 

You expect him to tell you it’s not _allowed—_ that Grogu will will reach out through the Force or something, when he’s ready, and that you should not expect any contact soon and should instead make your peace with a yawning future of emptiness that lies ahead of you like the black vacancy of space. 

But he nods curtly, and there is a soft, sympathetic flicker to his mouth. You think about how he has seen your eyes full and wet, and it should twist your gut with shame to recall, but it doesn’t. There’s something peculiarly unassuming about this man—boy— _Jedi._ And so you stand your ground as he approaches, Grogu murmuring delightedly from the curl of his arm, thrilled to see you again so soon. “Here,” the Jedi says, reaching into the folds of his cloak to pull out a small transmission disc. He holds it in the palm of his gloved hand for a moment, and when you make no move to take it, he reaches out, presses it into your palm. “When you are certain you’re alone, play this. There are instructions on how to reach the Jedi temple through encrypted communication.” 

Your hand burns as you clutch your fingers around it. “Thank you,” you say, because you know it must require great trust, to give you something confidential like this. Just as it required great trust for you to let this man see your skin. It’s odd, you suppose, considering you have only just met, but then again maybe not. You both want to protect the child, and in some ways, that is all that matters. 

As if he knows he is being thought about, Grogu keeps looking between the two of you, eyes wide, blinking, wet. “Thank you for ensuring his safety,” the Jedi says, eyes locking on yours through your mask. Most people do not know where to look when they regard you, but he does, as if he can see right through the beskar into the tar of your eyes. You squirm, shifting your weight, and then his tongue passes over his lips before he adds, “My name is Luke Skywalker, by the way.” 

“Luke,” you mumble, nodding crisply, the word sitting on your tongue sweet and certain, like you have heard it before, said it before. Like your teeth already know him. 

“I already know your name,” he says then, eyes darkening for a moment, the corner of his full mouth almost quirking up into a smile. “Grogu told me. But I will not repeat it, out of respect,” he says, and _finally,_ your stomach twists, your heart reels back as if it has been stung. _Finally_ , you feel invaded by him, if only for a moment, and it's almost a relief in its familiarity. “I know little about the customs on Mandalore—but I can sense you’d rather I not use your name.” 

You nod, sharply, because in this moment, you cannot speak. 

“Until next time,” he says. “When you can tell me what you’d _like_ to be called, if not your name.” 

And then, he and his droid and the thing you love most in the whole of the galaxy board the X-wing, and are gone. 

—-

You try your damnedest to burn it out, but Luke’s face sticks in your head. Lingers like a whiff of ozone, and no matter how hard you try to forget it when you close your eyes behind the visor of your helmet, there’s the haunting outline of his lips mapped out in your head like a constellation. His mouth. His eyes. His single bare hand, ever so gently cupped around Grogu’s body like he _knew_ how important it was to you that he be touched like he was precious. 

And it must have worked, because you let Grogu go with him. Maybe that’s why you can’t stop thinking about that moment—how it felt to hold unwavering and long sustained eye contact with a man for perhaps the first time in the whole of your lonely life. How it felt to have your name known but not used. 

It turns your stomach to remember. The terrifying rawness—the vulnerability. 

But also, something else new and spring-tender and weak yet undoubtedly alive, like the first tendril of green pushing from a seed casing and slithering hungrily through the topsoil, toward sun. You do not have a name for it, but perhaps you will water it, and see where it may grow. 

—-

The first several times you use the instructions on the transmission disc to hail the temple on Yavin IV, it _hurts_. The moment you see Grogu, your eyes pinch shut over tears, your breath comes short like a reflex. You know it is only a hologram, but you reach out and try to touch all the same, the pale blue light shying away from your fingers and crackling quietly. You didn't realize how accustomed you’d grown to having the small but solid heat of his body near yours, but you did. You do not touch people—you do not let people touch _you_. But now, as you blink from behind your visor with wet eyes, you wish that you could fold his tiny hand into your own once again.

The talks are brief but reassuring. You watch him move things with his mind, fingers outstretched into a determined splay, big black eyes scrunched into slits. Luke says very little during these exchanges as he supervises, but you never forget that he’s there. Strangely, it does not bother you to see the shape of him flickering nearby, like a ghost. 

By the fourth meeting, you manage to keep the tears from welling up. It is a good thing, too, because today is the day that Luke clears his throat and tells you, “He’d like to see you without your mask on, if that’s possible.” 

Your heart clenches into a defensive fist the way it always does when you are faced with this prospect. But then it slackens with your next breath, sinking into your gut as you swallow. “Oh,” you say. 

Luke blinks, something unreadable flickering across the shape of his mouth. “I can turn away,” he says softly. 

You shake your head. “It doesn’t matter,” you admit. “You’ve already seen.” 

“So I have,” he agrees. 

It should feel different, revealing the hologram of your insides instead of the real thing, but your blood races all the same as you release the helmet with a hiss and pull it off in a single motion. Grogu tilts closer, then gurgles. “Hey, kid,” you say gently, turning your cheek toward the image of him, thinking of all the light-years between you, how you wish they could be reduced to dust in a single blink. “Good to see you, too,” you murmur.

Luke watches you watch Grogu, head tilted so that his hair falls into his eyes. You think about brushing it away, since he doesn’t lift his hand to do so, and something about the angle of it bothers you and sticks in your skin like a thorn. Maybe because he does not need to avert his gaze this time—or maybe because you would like him to, anyway. Even if it’s only a formality. Even if every rule you have has been stripped and peeled apart like a garment reduced to loose strings.

The more you examine yourself, and the more you learn about Mandalore, the more you realize that everything you knew was invented, subjective, written the way stories are written. There is no truth, and your way—the way you thought was _The_ _Way,_ is only one of many ways. You are trying to pick a path and stay on it, but with the child gone, it's difficult. You find yourself swaying, fraying. And perhaps, when you have been distilled to your barest parts, you can build anew. But right now, you’re still lost. You’d still like to hide behind the glint of beskar, even if it is a folly notion. 

“He’s got a long way to go, but he’s learning,” Luke tells you eventually, laying a hand between Grogu’s ears onto the top of his head. You think of the softness there, and ache. “We’re making progress.” 

“Good,” you mumble, blinking. “Is he—he’s safe?” 

Luke licks his lips then, raises his gloved hand to push it though the wing of hair on his brow. “He’s _safer_ , but he’s still very powerful. Right now, even with what he’s learning, he lacks the discipline to hone that raw power. As we peel back layers and unlock what he remembers of the past, the power grows,” he explains. Then he pauses before taking a deep, wavering breath. “And I’ve been meaning to ask you how feasible it might be, for you to join him here and assist.” 

You right yourself with a jerk, heart steeling itself in your chest. “Why? I can’t teach him these things.” 

“No,” Luke admits. “But your presence would help _me_ teach him. As a Jedi, I can provide guidance toward the skill itself, but I don’t _know_ him. He trusts you, and together—together, I think we could help him advance more rapidly.” 

You blink, throat dry over the word _together._ It has been a repellant word to you, because you _had_ your clan, your people. As a foundling, you were _claimed._ But now—you are swaying, fraying. The rules don’t make sense anymore, and perhaps you are more alone than you have ever been. Perhaps you miss the one thing that gave you purpose, after your beskar. “I’m a wanted man,” you tell him. 

He shrugs. “So am I. Not just as a Jedi but as a former member of the Rebel Alliance. I’m sure you've noticed that the Empire is trying its hardest to overthrow the New Republic and regain its power. But I can promise you—Yavin IV is protected.” His eyes flash, and there’s a strange, uncertain shifting to his usually even stance. “I could protect you.” 

You think of the Dark Troopers, how easily he defeated the platoon of them, not just with his glowing emerald sword, but with—the Force, you suppose. Whatever that means. You think if there is anyone in the galaxy who might be able to cloak you from those who want to kill you, perhaps it is Luke Skywalker. After all, you trust him with the child. And he is far more precious to you than your own life. “Fine,” you say after a sharp inhalation. You do not like how raw your voice sounds, without the modulator. 

Luke smiles, and either the hologram glitches, or his cheeks violently color. It’s hard to say. 

—-

It’s terrifically humid here on Yavin. You stew in your own sweat beneath the weight of your armor, the ground sucking at your boots as you approach the temple with its sandstone walls glistening in a layer of shining green algae. Your visor sensors provide readings on the air and temperature, but you end up shutting them off because the knowledge only makes you feel stickier, more suffocated. 

You find it cooler and drier inside the temple itself, but only just. Luke greets you in a cavernous hallway, and his hair is damp and dark where it sticks to his brow, which shines with perspiration. “You get used to it,” he tells you, like he can read your mind. Maybe he can. You don’t exactly understand the limits and boundaries of the Force—what a man can and cannot do if he’s capable of tapping into the surging mystery of it. Still, you remind yourself to quiet your thoughts as much as possible around Luke Skywalker. He already knows your name, your eye color, the way you look when you are saying goodbye. He does not need to know anything else. 

—-

Grogu _is_ improving. He can move things much faster and more precisely than you remember, and there isn’t the quiet crackling of resistance when you ask him—he simply does it, eyes black and present. “Good, really good, kid,” you tell him over and over again, chest tight with awe. “I don’t understand why you need me here,” you say to Luke, even though you are _glad_ to be here, at least in this moment. Things make sense when Grogu is toddling around, getting into trouble, murmuring quietly from the halls. You have a purpose again. “He seems fine.” 

“He doesn't _do_ that for me,” Luke explains, shaking his head, the corner of his mouth quirking up into something almost self-deprecating “I know he _can._ I can feel it. But. There's a wall, when our minds try to touch. He bars me out, but you—you can get through that barrier.” 

You nod. “Grogu,” you say, fixing your gaze to him sternly. “You listen to this guy, okay?” 

And Luke actually _laughs,_ then—a sharp, open, musical sound. It shocks you, makes your heart lurch up into your throat like it’s been startled. He seems even _more_ boyish in this moment, young and pale, lips drawn over the flash of white teeth. “It doesn’t work like that, exactly,” he says, carding a hand through his hair—the bare one, this time, and part of you wonders why he only wears one glove, at the same time you are too stubborn to ask. “But we’ll work on it.” 

You bend to pick Grogu up, holding him tight to your chest, over your armor, which is over your heartbeat. 

Luke clears his throat and presses a gloved fist to his mouth thoughtfully. “Really, thank you for coming,” he murmurs. Something apologetic courses over his eyes, darkening them. You can tell, then, that they are light, and you remember them being grey-tinted green from the light of his weapon back on the ship. But you think if you were to remove your helmet, they’d be a pale, violent blue in this particular lighting. “I’ve never actually—well. I know how to _use_ the Force. But teaching younglings to use it…especially a youngling like _him_ , with a past like his…his progress won’t be linear. We’ll have to be patient.” 

You nod, patting Grogu’s fleecy robe as he squirms in your arms. “I understand.” 

When Luke smiles, it’s a bruised, tired-looking thing. There are dark circles under his eyes, and for the first time since he arrived in his cape and X-wing, you wonder if you are wrong to trust him. You don’t doubt his competence as a Jedi, or his dedication to Grogu. You only wonder how much pain a man can withstand before he stops being able to give of himself. You would know such things—there are reasons you wear armor, reasons your existence requires scaffolding and the comfort of a mask. 

Grogu reaches out, whining, and makes a fist in the loose black muslin of Luke’s cape. “Hey,” you scold him as you tug him away, embarrassed. “Don’t.” 

Luke’s eyes widen, though, bright and surprised. Probably blue. “No, it’s—it’s good. He _wants_ us both to teach him.” 

_Together,_ you think, easy like an exhale. But then you silence it, since you’re still not sure if Luke can read your mind. 

—-

Rainstorms come fast and fierce on Yavin IV. More than once you are caught unawares out in the thick of them, doused in the sudden onslaught of warm, blustery, jungle rain. Sometimes, you run for cover. Other times, you embrace your fate and realize there is nothing to be done but stand there beneath the downpour and wait for it to end. 

It is during one of these rainstorms that you find Luke Skywalker seated on a wet, half-crumbled sandstone platform outside of the temple, drenched and swaying. 

At first, you think something is wrong. Rain pounds the earth in a near horizontal slant, and somewhere inside, Grogu is sleeping. You thought Luke was meditating; it’s what he _said_ he was doing when he disappeared—but instead, he is sitting in the rain, hair and clothes slicked to his slim but strong frame, glinting in the dusk like obsidian, like oil. It occurs to you then that you don’t actually _know_ what counts as meditation, and maybe you’re wrong to think this isn’t it. Maybe you should leave him to whatever mysterious, mystical, Jedi-thing he’s doing. But then you see him bring a bottle to his lips and swig whatever is inside. 

It surprises you, and so you approach him as the droplets thunder upon your helmet, deafening. “Hey,” you shout over the clatter of rain. 

He turns around, and blinks. “I’m sorry,” he says automatically, stumbling to his feet like he’s been caught, eyes slitted against the downpour. His hair is dark with water, slicked across his brow, rivulets coursing down pale cheeks, droplets collecting in his lashes. “You shouldn’t see me like this.” 

You step close enough that the sensors on your helmet detect the burn of liquor on his breath, and yes, maybe. Maybe you should get out of here, leave him to his pain, whatever he’s drowning in that bottle. Or maybe not. Maybe you should stay. “Like what?” you ask. “All wet?” 

He snorts, nearly trips on the rain-heavy weight of his cape as he backs away from you into the storm. Winds wrack the slender, pale trees that rise behind him, and their branches snap and clack together, dark foliage battered and twisting in reed-like strips. “No,” he shouts over the roar of it all. Then Luke is shrugging, raising the bottle apologetically as he blinks back wetness. “Drunk. I don’t know. A mess.” 

And he _does_ look a mess right now—but you smile behind your visor anyway, rain sluicing from your armor in shimmering sheets. “Jedi,” you say, gesturing toward the temple. “Come out of the rain.” 

You’re surprised when he follows you—not inside, not all the way, but at least to an overhang, where pillars hold up the remnants of a slanting roof. It is nearly dry under here, and he sighs as he collapses into a sitting position, back propped against the wall. After a few moments, you gingerly lower yourself beside him. The rain drums relentlessly outside your shelter, but now that you are no longer beneath the cascade of it, the world seems almost quiet, until Luke clears his throat to speak. “When I first took Grogu,” he mumbles, wringing water out of his hood into a puddle on the ground, “I thought I could show him everything I knew. But I’m realizing—I’m not a _teacher,_ not like Obi Wan or Yoda were teachers. I feel like I’m letting them down, sometimes.” 

You do not know who he’s speaking of, but you catch the sentiment. Plus, you understand, on a gut level, what it means to come from a long line of tradition and fail to uphold the rigid, unfaltering glory of it all. To struggle at replicating simplicity. “They were your teachers?” you ask, watching his pale, ungloved hand close in a white-knuckled fist around the neck of whatever he's drinking. 

“What? Oh. Yes,” Luke confirms, nodding. “I don't know how much you know about the Jedi…but it’s a dead order. There are not many of us left, we’re scattered across the galaxy, in hiding, essentially. I’m trying to rebuild the Order, restore it to the way things used to be. But. I’m working with _literal_ ghosts, broken pieces…crumbling temples,” he explains with a self-effacing tilt to his mouth as he gestures to the ruined sandstone around them before coughing out a humorless laugh. Then he brings the bottle to his lips again, taking a long swig and wincing. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” he says resolutely, eyes flashing as he looks right through your mask, boring holes past the visor to the exact place your eyes lie. “But half the time I feel like I’m not a _real_ Jedi. Like I’m doing it all wrong.” 

You study him, and something tight inside of you unfurls, softened like hard summer earth under a deluge of rain. “You defeated an army of Dark Troopers single-handedly,” you remind him. There are no doubts in your mind that he is a Jedi—you’ve seen him fight. He’s not a warrior like you are a warrior, or how Cara is a warrior. He’s something else entirely. There is a confident, quiet placidity to the way he made his way to the bridge to you and Grogu. Every motion was intentional, as if it were backed by the power of the universe, something base and elemental moving his arm. You do not understand the Jedi—but you know in your heart of hearts that he is one. 

But Luke waves his gloved hand through the air dismissively. “I can use the Force, sure. But that’s not all there is to being a Jedi Knight…it’s a lifestyle, there are _rules_ , and I…,” he tapers off before choking out a clipped laugh. You stare at his smile, how it is there on the curve of his mouth without reaching the maybe-blue of his eyes. “I break every one,” he confesses, gaze flashing up to hold yours. 

You think of the way he pressed the transmission disc into your palm. You think of his glove, and then, of his skin. You think of the way he trusts you with his secrets, even though he has no reason to. You think of how you trust him in the same strange, inexplicable way. “Do the rules matter?” you ask, which is absurd, because out of everyone in the whole fucking galaxy, you know about rules, about the ways in which they matter. 

He smiles, shakes his head, chews the inside of his cheek so it hollows out. “They must, why else would they exist?” he asks the storm, gaze sweeping back out to the rain. “But I’ve never been able to do it by the books—most Jedi are trained from the time they’re _children,_ like Grogu was. But I was nineteen when I even _learned_ that the Force existed. And both my mentors died before I was taught everything there is to know…I speak to them, sometimes, but they never have clear answers, and everything blurs together, and—,” he swallows thickly, eyes flicking back to you for a moment before he stares resolutely at the ground between his splayed knees. “I _drink,_ clearly, and I fall in love, and I’ve gotten my heart broken, I form attachments, I get _jealous…_ I feel like a youngling myself, half the time, and I don’t know what I’m doing on my _own_ let alone how I’ll rebuild the Order, and. I just. Most days it feels like I’m shooting blaster fire in the dark.” 

Behind the rain-slick shield of beskar, your heart is pounding, racing ahead without you. _I drink,_ Luke had said, with the bottle of liquor sitting to his right. _I fall in love,_ Luke had said, with you sitting to his left. 

You swallow, nothing to say that will not come out wavering like a mirage, so instead, you say nothing at all. He blinks rain-clotted lashes at you before taking another long, measured drink, throat bobbing as he chokes it down. “I understand,” he says then. “If you’d like to take Grogu away from here, after hearing this. If you don’t trust me with him anymore.” 

Finally, you manage to shake your head. “No. You’re the best teacher for him. He’s starting late, just like you did. He’s not your average Jedi, either,” you remind him. “There’s no one who better understands.” 

Luke presses his lips together, almost into a smile. “Maybe.” 

“Anyway,” you tell him, studying his mouth, licking over the chapped-dry scrub of your own, hidden away like a secret. “The kid loves you.” 

He turns to look at you then, eyes wet, smile sad. But still, it’s a smile all the same. Not the hint of one, or the shadow, or the wish. “I love him, too,” Luke admits in a mumble, and your heart plummets, speeds, races into the stars like a foolish young thing. “I’m not supposed to, though. Jedi can’t—,” and then he cuts himself off, eyes narrowing. 

The only thing to do is stare. You get away with it, because of course, your eyes are covered. You stare and you stare, wishing your visor sensors could tell you about Luke like they tell you about the atmosphere, the humidity, the temperature, the thermal signature. But they don’t. They can’t even tell you much about the true color of his eyes. The only thing to do is stare—or else, spill your insides like blood from a jugular wound. “I’m what they call a foundling,” you mumble. “I was raised by Mandalorians, but I am not from Mandalore. I was found, as a child, and taken in by the Tribe on Nevarro.” you explain. The words come slow and half-lost to the sound of the rain, but still, they come. Luke leans closer, so that he may listen, and your fist clenches at your side. “I owed them everything. They were my family. But—I lost them, back on Nevarro. And since then, I’ve learned. That what we were taught, as the Children of the Watch, isn’t—,” you cut yourself off before you swallow thickly, each syllable suddenly barbed in your throat. You have heard these words, but you have not spoken them aloud. It is one thing, to listen and resist. It is another entirely to internalize them enough to repeat. “The Way I learned is not widely taught. Not on Mandalore. Not anywhere,” you explain. 

Luke twists a chunk of his wet hair between thumb and forefinger, eyes sweeping over your helmet, your pauldrons, your chestplate. He must be able to see his own reflection in the shine of beskar, and you wonder what he is thinking. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “It’s hard—to think you understand something, only to realize it’s a fragment of some bigger picture.” Then his head tilts, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “I relate.” 

“I tell you this to remind you that cultures are not—there’s not one way to do something. Or be something,” you explain. “Sometimes you make up your own version using the pieces you borrow.” Then you lift your hand, gesturing toward the pillar closest to you. “Ghosts. Crumbling temples.” 

Luke sighs, thumbing up and down the neck of his now half-empty bottle. You track the motion, gaze stuck on the pale bend of his wrist. “It certainly feels like I’m making things up,” he admits. “But maybe that’s all I can do. Build it from scratch with the bits I have left.” 

You nod once. “The Children of the Watch don’t exist anymore. Not as they did. And neither do the Jedi.” 

When Luke smiles then, it’s crooked and soft, his hair curling where it dries into flyaway wisps. “We’re alone,” he says, and that’s not exactly what you mean, but yes—you suppose he’s right. 

“Just. If you want to drink, there’s no one who’s going to tell you you’re not being Jedi enough,” you offer. And then your heart pounds in your chest, because it knows full well what else you are going to say. “Or if you want to fall in love. Or if I want to take my mask off. Or whatever else.” 

Electricity suddenly ricochets between your bodies, like lightning sent down by the storm. The sky does not flash, though, there is no rumble of thunder. Only the rain and its steady descent growing thinner now, like a misting curtain of wet, the flash of Luke’s eyes locked onto you. “ _Do_ you want to?” he asks, voice very quiet. 

“Want to what?” you ask flatly, blood icing in your veins. 

“Take off your helmet,” he asks. Not _fall in love,_ but still. It holds the same gravity in this moment. You have given it that gravity. You have passed him something secret and coded, and wondered if he will pry it apart, or bury it in earth. Instead, he presses upon it gently: “Is that—you’re not supposed to?” 

“Many Mandalorians do,” you mumble. “Apparently. “

“But not the Children of the Watch,” he ventures. 

“No,” you admit. “Never.” 

There is a pause, a silence, a shiver of air as his pupils dilate, and he sucks in a sudden breath. So now he knows. What he has of you, what he has witnessed, what you have given him. How there is no hope for you to forge something cold and remote or professional with him, because he has already seen you split in two, cleaved and bleeding. How it’s fine that he’s drank half a bottle of something and admitted he’s afraid he’s a fraud, because you have already trusted him with something much greater, more raw. Understanding flickers over his face in waves, and you wait. 

But instead of saying anything, he reaches out and brushes his fingers down your arm, over the beskar gauntlet that stretches from your elbow, to your wrist. 

You do not feel the touch, not really, but you jerk away reflexively all the same, as if you have been burnt. His brow furrows, and he lays his hand in his lap. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“It’s fine.” 

And it’s not, but you don't _know_ what it is, not really. There are things you want to ask him—burials you want to exhume. Instead, you bump your knuckles against his gloved wrist, just to make sure you can. 

His eyes darken for a moment, and so suddenly, the rain stops. “Hey,” he says, pointing toward the burn of sunlight as it filters in shafts through the dense, glittering trees. “It’s over.” And you think, maybe he’s right. The Children of the Watch are over, and so are the Jedi Knights. Perhaps something new and impure is rustling awake from a long, rain-wet sleep, blinking toward a new glow. 

—-

It becomes routine, though there is not always a bottle, and it does not always rain. But now, more often than not, when Grogu takes his evening nap, you and Luke sit outside in the periphery of the ruins and share bits of yourself in dodges and parries, in bluffs like a poorly bet game of sabacc. You tell him as much as you can without sacrificing the core of you, and you imagine he does his best to offer the same. It hurts, most of the time, but it is also like sutures: these quiet exchanges hold your parts together and give you something to bleed into, no matter the way truths tug at your flesh.

You learn that Luke wasn’t just another resistance pilot: he was _the_ Rebellion hero. It was his lucky, one-in-a-million shot that brought down the Death Star. “I heard that story,” you admit. “Thought the guy who did it would be older. Taller.” 

He smiles, soft and open how he does more often these days, especially if he’s drinking. “No, just me,” he murmurs. “Not even now-me…then-me. I was just a stupid, impulsive, _angry_ kid. Plucked up from a farm in Tatooine and tossed into the thick of something I hardly understood.” Then he shakes his head, hair shifting across his brow, shining and catching in the last remnants of the day’s light. You imagine what it might feel like against your bare cheek, or slipping between your fingers. And that has become a habit now, too—dreaming of Luke Skywalker closer than you have ever had anyone else. “It was the Force that destroyed the Death Star,” he mumbles. “Not me.” 

“I’ve spent time in Tatooine,” you tell him after a pause, because it's easier to say than _It was_ you _who destroyed the Death Star, no matter what cosmic universe shit backed your shot._ “Lots of sand.” 

His eyes light up. “Oh, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” you say. “Plenty of work in Mos Eisley for a bounty hunter.” 

He nods, smiles. “I remember seeing Mandalorians there. Very mysterious, with the masks and the jetpacks and the blasters. I was intrigued—I was always intrigued,” he says as his gaze tumbles to the ground, becoming dark and unreadable. And maybe you are the one in the helmet, but the truth is you _both_ wear masks. “Hey,” he says then, curling his fingers around the neck of his bottle and twisting it into a neat circle, glass scraping against the grit of sandstone. “How did the Tribe feel about drinking? Mos Eisley is all bars.” 

You shrug. “Never advised on the job. But there’s no…formal rule against it.” 

“Hard to drink with a helmet on, though,” Luke observes, one brow arching up. 

You nod. “Right.” 

“So if it happened it wasn’t a social event. It was private.” 

“I guess so,” you admit. “I wouldn’t know.” 

There is a lingering quiet, and it stretches between you for a moment, until you hear the tell-tale sloshing sound of liquor as he lifts the bottle and drinks from it. Then he hands it to you. “Seeing as I’ve already seen your face… theoretically, you could share this with me?” he asks, and you glance at him, at the wet glisten on his lower lip, then the shine of spit on the glass rim of the bottle. You imagine pressing your own mouth there, tasting this place he has just been. 

“Theoretically,” you say. 

“I”ll turn away,” he offers. “If you’d like to.” 

“You don’t have to,” you remind him. “You said it. You’ve already seen me.” 

“Yes. But—the offer stands.” 

Without answering, you reach with an uncertain grip and pull the helmet up just enough to expose your mouth, your nose. The world smells damp and humid and impossibly green, and then there’s the burn of alcohol as you take the bottle from Luke and raise it to your lips. You throw back too much, and it scalds your throat on the way down, making you cough and sputter. 

Luke grins with the white glint of teeth, making no effort _not_ to look at the bit of your skin you’ve revealed. He must see how you flush, how sweat beads beneath your mustache as you try to swallow the acrid bitterness down. “You drink that straight?” you ask him, scraping your tongue against your teeth before passing him the bottle and dropping your helmet back into place. “The Jedi had the right idea,” you tell him from behind the security of your modulator. 

“I used to hate it, too,” he tells you, licking his lips before resting the bottle against them, mimicking the impression of your own mouth. Something twists in your gut as you behold it. “An—ah. An old friend taught me to drink,” he says. “But I didn’t actually do it much until he—until we stopped talking,” he mumbles. “I guess we still talk,” he adds then. “But it’s different.” 

You don’t know what he means, but you get the distinct impression that you are not supposed to press the matter or ask him more. It is something—someone from his Rebellion days. From when he was stupid, impulsive, _angry._ A younger Luke Skywalker, dually sun-kissed and rough-palmed, lost in the endless stretch of sand that is Tatooine. For a single moment, you imagine what it might have been like to meet him there, years ago, under the heat of those two suns setting. But then you remember how different you were then, too. How little you let penetrate your layers upon layers. “Give me that,” you say, reaching for the bottle with one hand and lifting your helmet up again with the other. 

He acts surprised, but still he gives it to you, and together you grow dizzy as darkness filters in through the thatch of trees like spilled ink, or engine fuel. He studies your mouth, and you pretend you don't notice, or mind. 

—-

It is strange, staying in the same place for any stretch of time. Usually, you are always moving, traveling from one planet to the next, sleeping in your armor, stealing away for rare moments of solitude when you can ritually remove it and bathe. Your life has been characterized by running, and chasing, and never in your memory have you settled. 

You’re still not sure that you’ve settled—you’re not even sure that it’s something you’re capable of. But here on Yavin, there is at least the option every night to strip down and wipe the grime from your skin. Sometimes you put your armor back on before climbing into the creaky cot you sleep in, because there is security in the unrelenting embrace of it, and you have never lived without such things out of necessity. But other times…you don’t. You drift off bare-skinned in softness and awake in the same. It is odd, and uncomfortable, but it also feels like a tentative step toward some newly forged stage in your life, where you are not a Child of the Watch but something else nameless and natal. Something fashioned from the dust of the past, the hope for the future. From the place where a spear of pure beskar and a green lightsaber might touch. 

Grogu sleeps in your quarters, and his presence helps soothe the stirring in your chest that tells you there is danger in lingering. In undressing. His soft, murmuring snores remind you of the way things were for those months you spent with him in the cockpit of the _Razor Crest_ , except this time, you’re both safe. You’re not sure how Luke _does_ it (or how he can feel like a failure of a Jedi in spite of doing it), but Yavin IV is magically cloaked, tucked into the fold of the universe and invisible to Imperial ships. No one has come for you here, and so, there is no reason to run. You tell yourself to pause—to take a breath—to lose yourself in studying the way Grogu is growing. 

And grow, he does. As you peel back the layers and draw him from the shadows, his eyes brighten and become so defiant during his lessons that he’s almost too much for Luke in moments, which always spurs your heart to witness, because it is not just Grogu who strengthens, who changes. It’s this thing in your heart, the knowledge that you could _stay here_ on Yavin, beneath the thick green canopy, hidden away from prying eyes. 

Luke has fashioned you a planet-wide armor, and perhaps that is why you can sleep with your bare arms crossed over your chest, the damp chill of your quarters a thing that touches your face, like a kiss. 

—-

Sometimes, if the night is right, Luke will talk unfettered about the past. 

When he does, the facts come out staggered and dripping with self-criticism, but if you are quiet enough, he rushes and spills like something unstoppered, like he’s _grateful_ you are there to listen. His accounts of the Rebellion are not glorious war stories—they’re blood-stained and aching, rife with loss. You can tell they hurt him still, that there are wounds that have not yet healed into scars. You understand that, in his heart, there is a well of regret, and if you let him, he’ll drown in it. 

The Luke you know is balanced precariously between warm and stern when he teaches Grogu, and most of all, he is unflappably _patient_. But you learn that before the war, he was loud and brash and childish; he rushed into things and caved beneath the weight of frustration. “You?” you ask him, brows lifting behind your visor, head cocked gently toward him, because you don't want to miss a single word. 

He laughs. “Yes, me. An absolute brat, I _never_ paused before I mouthed off, I was almost always ruining things because I didn’t stop to listen, to _think._ It got me out of some scrapes…but mostly got me into them. That was my biggest challenge, when I trained on Dagobah, just, quieting my mind. Shutting up long enough to really feel the full potential of the Force before I got impatient and gave up.” 

“Wow,” you murmur, because it’s difficult to picture, though fondness blooms in your chest as you try. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, his smile a lopsided, careful thing. “I’m glad you met me now. I was so judgmental back then. I would have offended you.” 

“Probably,” you say, but your throat tightens as you realize you still wish you could have known him, no matter how improbable. You have grown to want _every_ version of Luke Skywalker, your hunger a wild and thrumming thing as inescapable as your shadow, ever following you and clinging to your heels. Sometimes, you try to kick it away. But like a starving animal, it slinks back, licking its lips, tail between its legs. 

You swallow, thick and measured. “You said you fell in love once,” you remind him, because you have been wondering, and he is loose-lipped tonight. “Who was she?” 

His eyes flash up to regard you, wide and dark as he clears his throat. “He,” Luke admits, pausing to study your reaction, as if he can see through your mask. 

“Who was he?” you rephrase, heart pounding. You have suspected as much about him—or perhaps _longed_ for as much. The confirmation makes your eyes sting, your throat tight. 

Luke looks away from you then and into the dark jungle, rubbing his bare hand over his knee, which is what he does whenever he’s _not_ drinking, and there is no bottle to reach for. “He was a smuggler with a broken down, rust bucket of a ship that Obi Wan and I hired for a rescue mission, and I was a naive, stupid teenager who fell for his whole—charming act,” Luke explains, smiling a smile that is harsh, and barbed, and angled. “I never stood a chance. He ended up joining the Alliance, and we fought together for a few years. I was stupidly, terribly in love with him, but I knew—even _then_ , I knew it wasn’t going to last as soon as the Empire was overthrown. We always had an expiration date. And sure enough, once it was all over, he married my sister, and here I am.”

The words hang in the air between you, sitting upon the humidity for a beat before they fall, one by one, and sink in. You cough. “Oh,” you say, because what _else_ do you say to something like that. _What a fucking fool, to pass up a love like yours. What a terrible waste. “_ I’m sorry,” you eventually add. 

His grin becomes wry and knowing, and he shakes his head. “I’m not,” he says. “I used to be. For _months,_ it hurt enough to bar me from the Force. I didn’t trust myself connecting to it from a place of pain, so I didn’t. But…it’s alright now. I’m stronger for it, I think.” 

You wonder about fractured hearts, about the once-broken rule that Jedi aren’t supposed to form attachments. You wonder if Luke has steeled himself against that possibility now, if his strength and efficiency and deep, profound depth of patience are born from scar tissue, welded shut hatches, denial. Then you feel foolish for hoping you’re wrong. “I’m sorry he didn’t feel the same way,” you end up saying, when what you really mean is _not every man is a fool, not every man runs._

Luke hums, cocking his head like he’s remembering something that used to sting but has only just dulled into a manageable ache. “The thing is, I think he _did_ feel the same way. He certainly _maintained_ that he didn’t, even, like, balls-deep inside me—pardon my language—but. No one runs so hard from something that isn’t real, you know?” he explains, eyes terribly bright, something desert-daring and hauntingly young and absolutely devastating in them. 

Your stomach twists low and hot, cheeks burning as you choke out a surprised laugh. “Then I’m sorry he was an idiot,” you decide on. 

“It’s fine,” Luke assures you. “I don’t feel it anymore. Not the loving him part, anyway. All that’s left is the hurt. And even that’s better. Or, it’s _getting_ better.” 

You nod. “Loneliness scars,” you agree. 

“Yeah, it does,” he murmurs before rubbing his palms together fiercely, mouth twisting into a grimace. You can see him beginning to wade into his well of regret, and you want to reach out and catch his elbow in your hand to pull him back. “ _Damn,_ I wish I had something to drink right now. I haven’t ever told anyone about Han. Not like this, anyway. ” 

“Well. Thank you,” you tell him, uncertain whether it's the right thing to say, though you _are_ sick with gratitude. You trust him more than you should, more than you have ever trusted anyone, and it is a comfort to know you’re not alone. “He sounds like a real asshole.” 

Luke laughs, rolling his head on the sandstone wall, strands of hair snagging along it. “Sometimes,” he murmurs. “Mostly just—scared, I think. Now that I’m about as old as he was when I met him… I dunno. I thought he should have it all figured out, but _I_ don’t. I used to think he tried to hurt me, but now I think he just did a shit job of hurting himself.” Then he blinks and shakes his head abruptly, like he is trying to jostle memories from his mind before they embed themselves and grow roots. “What about you…about Mandalorians? I can’t imagine there’s much room for love, or sex, when your creed requires you to never show your face to anyone else.” 

His voice sounds like a gamble masked in layers, a bluff tucked inside a truth tucked inside a lie. Your skin prickles beneath your armor at the word _sex_ , throat dry as you manage: “There would be no children born on Mandalore if it never happened.” 

“Okay,” he says. “So how does it work?” 

You shrug as your cheeks color, because you do not know. It wasn’t something you wondered about at length, it never became relevant enough for you to inquire about it when you were a part of the Tribe. You have always planned to live and die alone, but that was before the child, the man who came to take him from you. The man you followed here, into this once-grand temple, now reduced to ruins. “I never got around to finding out.” 

“Oh,” he says, brows arching for a moment before they drop. “I see.” 

The silence stretches between you like an evaporated lake bed, dusty and choking as the air grows very hot beneath your helmet. You need something to say, to redirect him, to bring water rushing forth into the vacancy again, and so. You ask about the other mystery that gnaws at your insides and keeps you awake at night. “Is it some secret Jedi thing,” you venture, gesturing to his lap, where his hands rest on his knees, “that you only wear one glove?” 

He flinches, then glances down to his palms like he’s forgotten that this is a thing he does. “That—no. It’s to protect the hardware,” he explains, tugging the glove off. 

Your chest clenches in a strange, raw tenderness as he reveals a prosthetic hand, the metal glinting as he twists his wrist, flexes his fingers. “It used to have a poly-compound mock-skin, but the humidity here made it deteriorate. Sort of horrific, actually, hence the glove,” he explains before tugging it back on. “Lost it in the Rebellion.” Then, after a pause, “I guess I lost a lot in the Rebellion.” 

And as you sit in the quiet and listen to the rustle of the jungle and its endless, seesawing, insect chirp, you wonder if he knows how much he has _gained_ since the Rebellion’s end. If he knows you are not a fool, you would not run, if you had reason to believe you could stay. 

—-

The next storm is a furious and midnight-sick thing. It shakes the foundation of the temple, and Grogu lurches awake trembling, eyes wide and frightened. As rain pelts the walls, you cradle him to your chest and pat his back gently, murmuring sleepy nonsense in Mando’a until he finally calms down. Your eyes are closed when Luke opens your door, but they flash open the moment you hear his sharp intake of breath, the click of his boots on the ground.

He stands frozen, gaze wide and shocked, because of course—he wasn't expecting to see you in nothing but trousers and a loose tunic, hair rumpled from sleep. “I’m so sorry,” he gasps, averting his gaze, staring resolutely at the wall as his weight shifts nervously, like he wants to turn on his heel but knows that it will be just as impolite. “I should have—I sensed a disturbance in the Force, I knew he was scared, and I didn’t think—”

“Luke,” you murmur, voice tired and skinned raw. You stride over to where your helmet is carefully hung in its designated place on the wall and put it on so that he might look at you again. “It’s fine.” 

He nods curtly, and you cannot forget the flush of his cheeks that you beheld in the split-second you witnessed him witnessing you. 

—-

The rain does not relent for days. It comes in wild torrents, and you never really dry out. And then there is the wind, which buffets the temple and howls through the hallways and whips around the pillars like a live thing, carrying droplets so sharp that Grogu winces when they touch him, as if they sting. Luke still brings his lessons outside— _I had a breakthrough in a swamp, once, you can learn a lot from the elements—_ and you fret more than is reasonable. You are always hovering nearby, blind as the water obscures your visor, deaf as it plummets your helmet in a thunderous cacophony. Grogu moves slick, massive rocks through the air in a rotating sphere, and the whole time you watch, your heart is in your throat. 

“Relax,” Luke tells you, hair slick against his brow, shivering in the bitter wind. “He can sense you’re worried. And so can I.” 

“It’s dangerous out here,” you grit out through chattering teeth. “He could—”

“He won’t. He’s strong. He needs you to _trust_ him, that's the best way to keep him safe and focused.” 

And you _know_ this is the truth—you don’t yet understand how the Force works, you cannot _feel_ it in any tangible way, but you are aware that it functions as an energetic conduit of sorts, that anything you feel powerfully can be picked up and sensed, like water under a dowsing rod. So, you shut your eyes tight and try to drown out the sound of the rain, picturing Grogu safe, and warm, and secure. _You got this, kid,_ you think. _Those rocks are nothing._

Miraculously, it helps. Luke lays his hand on the small of your back for a moment, beneath the cut of your armor where there’s nothing but the wet bunch of fabric over your skin. You still under the warmth of his hand, breath catching. “Look,” he urges. “He’s straining less. He can feel it.” 

You blink, trying to wipe the water from your visor so you can see, but every part of you is either wet or beskar, and neither provide much in the way of mopping. Then Luke shifts in front of you, the dark blur of his glove spreading in your line of vision before there’s a sudden clarity, as if he has stopped the rain. “What did you do?” you ask. Then, you narrow your eyes at Grogu, the way his tiny face is no longer scrunched in concentration, having smoothed to placidity. You let out a shuddering exhale, Luke drops his arm, and the rain returns in a grey sheet. 

“The sort of thing the old Jedi Order would scoff at. We’re not supposed to use the Force for idle things….party tricks,” he admits. “But I wanted you to see.” 

“I didn’t think it was idle,” you tell him, reaching around to touch the place on your back, where his flesh and blood hand had so briefly laid. “Or a trick.” 

—-

Grogu is exhausted after the lesson, but he’s not _weak_ the way he used to get after such a big display. He’s just heavy-eyed, slow-moving, soft. You dry him off and change him into a new robe before tucking him into his makeshift crib. “You did good, pal,” you murmur, brushing gloved knuckles over his wispy head before he nods off. 

Luke is not outside beneath your usual overhang where you often find each other around this time of night. You wander through the temple, thinking that these hours are strange and pointless and empty without him, without the moments you spend silently studying the way his full bottom lip dimples under the press of a bottle. The way the sunset shines in his hair, if the sky is not cloud-thick and grey. 

You have never been to his quarters before tonight, but that is where you end up. The door is ajar and you find him standing there beside his unmade bed, hands braced on the sandstone wall, his head bent and dripping into a puddle on the ground. Without thinking, you push inside. “Are you alright?” you ask, laying a hand on the shape of his shoulder, feeling the muscle bunch reflexively beneath the two layers of fabric as he startles. 

“I—yes,” he mumbles, rubbing his palms over his wind-chapped, still damp face. “I was trying to talk to my mentors about something, but—as it turns out, dead Jedi don’t always come when you call.” 

His eyes flash then as he turns to you, something wild and defiant in them, like the crackling silence on the other end of whatever form of communication he sent out into the ether is the final step in solidifying his resolve to shatter tradition and find his own way in the remnants. You don’t know why, but seeing that shift terminates your own hesitance, and something cracks. You reach out and very gently lay your gloved palm on his cheek, thumb at the corner of his mouth, like you’re asking a question. 

With a clench of terror in your chest, you realize what you are doing and snatch your hand back. “I’m sorry. I—”

“No,” Luke hisses, reaching out lightning quick and grabbing your wrist. Chilled metal fingers bite into the speed of your pulse, holding you fast. “Please,” he says, something desperate in his blown-wide pupils. “You don’t—you can keep your helmet on. You can keep it _all_ on. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, but _please,_ Din. If you want to—you can touch me. I want you to.” he begs. 

Your next breath comes in aching and tremulous, like fire in your lungs. A moment passes, then another. “I want to, too” you admit upon the third beat of silence, your other hand flexing at the thought as you step closer, boxing him in. “But I don’t know how.” 

Luke softens his grip, but only just. Then he swallows. “I can show you,” he promises, voice soft, eyes hooded. “Just let me show you.” He holds out his bare palm in the charged space between your bodies, like an offering. “Give me your hand.” 

The world tilts, then shifts, as if it is letting out a long-held sigh, and so, you do. It is very obviously shaking, fingers curled tight to your palm in an almost fist. Luke patiently unfolds each one before hooking his own finger into the wrist of your glove, nail gently razing over your skin. He looks at you, gaze silently imploring before you swallow thickly, nod. _Yes,_ you tell him without words. _Yes._ You reach out with your other hand and gently lay it on the jut of his narrow, rain-soaked hip. Heat bleeds through to your palm as he peels your glove away very carefully, and then, it is astoundingly hard to breathe.

Time stutters, slows, shudders to a stop like a ship landing. Luke thumbs intentionally into the meat between your thumb and forefinger before drawing your bare hand to his cheek. You gasp at the feel of his skin as you cup the shape of him—smooth against your fingertips but stubble-rough under your thumb where you rub at his jaw. You feel him flush as his eyes sweep nervously up to you before he turns your palm to his lips and kisses it. It’s a chaste kiss, at first, until his breath quickens, his lashes flutter, and then you feel his mouth part around the slick of his tongue. “Luke,” you say, and it comes out ripped and rough, as if you have been storm battered. 

He nips at the heel of your hand and asks, “Is this okay?” before dissolving into soft, hungry kisses, like he cannot stop himself. 

You dip closer, until his brow is touching your helmet. “It’s holy,” you tell him, because there is no other word. 

He moans softly into the cradle of your fingers before licking his way up and swallowing two down, sea-slick and fever-hot. And then there is nothing else in the whole of the galaxy save for Luke Skywalker’s lips spread and sucking at your knuckles. He keeps you there, drowning and trembling until he pulls off in a mess of spit and pushes your hand up into the rain-damp softness of his hair. Instinctively you card your fingers through it, and he mouths over your wrist where the blood pounds. 

His gaze flickers down to your body, and he studies you. Not like he’s imagining what lies beneath the beskar, but like he is allowing himself to really _look_ at it for the first time. As if he is seeing you, whole, as you are. It’s overwhelming, and you burn up under his gaze, reduced to nothing but ash as you stare at him staring, his own reflection shining back at himself from the steely panel that protects your heart. 

Then, as he presses his cheek into one palm, he pries your other from his hip and strips this glove as he did the first. The motion is ritual, deliberate. Your breath snags as you watch him guide your hand to the space between his thighs, a groan forced up from your lips as he makes you cup him where he’s hard, hot, hungry. 

Experimentally, you thumb over the shape of him, heart stopping. “Okay?” he asks. 

“Okay,” you promise. Then, on an inhale, “Tell me how.” 

He ruts against you in muted bucks, inhalations strangled, face growing hotter beneath the press of your thumb. “Do you touch yourself?” he asks. 

“Not much,” you admit, studying his expressions as you feel him out, stunned by each twitch and shudder and gasp. “I don’t want to think about my own body,” you realize, heart skidding in the trap of your ribcage as you put words to this unspeakable thing. “I want. I just want to learn yours.” 

Luke nods as you thumb up and down his cheek, like he understands. “Okay,” he says, backing away toward the bed and tugging you along with him. “Come here, then. Undress me.” 

Your stomach plummets as you follow, knees bracketing his hips on the mattress. You pull his shirt over this head, gaze tracing over parts of him before you follow the path tentatively with your hands. The slope of his neck. The flexing muscle of his arms as he props himself up on the bed. The plane of his side, thumbs notching over ribs before finding the give at the ditch of his waist. His clothes are cold and wet, but as you work together to rid him of them, you find that his skin is warm underneath, and it makes your mouth flood in longing. 

He kicks off his boots, unclips his cape so it slithers to the ground wet and heavy like a sail. Two of your fingers still shine with his spit as you drag them over his skin, down his sternum, to the wiry, ash-blond hair beneath his navel. “You’re beautiful,” you tell him, because you have always thought so, even before it was something you _allowed_ yourself to think. The awareness knocked around inside you like shame, like silence, but _now_ , it trips out as the truth. “So fucking beautiful.” 

He ducks his head shyly, which seems absurd given the way he’s unbuttoning his trousers and rolling them down toned thighs dusted in fine golden hair. “I wanted you to think so,” he murmurs, struggling out of the wet cling of fabric before kicking it to the ground, spreading out beneath you. “I _hoped_ you thought so.” 

You stare at him. He’s marble-pale, chest heaving, thighs flexing, and then, between them, so hard and pulsing with want that your mouth floods anew, breath coming out in erratic gusts that fog up the inside of your visor. Every inch of him astounds you—you have _never_ wanted something so badly in your life. Tentatively, you reach out and brush your knuckles too lightly up the line of his shaft, moved by the way he keens and trembles into the pressure, head falling back into the pillows, lashes dark against his cheek. “Well I did,” you admit, curling your fingers around him experimentally, gripping his cock in a fist. “Still do.” 

“Fuck,” Luke chokes out, arching his back and pushing into the heat of your palm. “Anything you want to take is yours,” he murmurs, gaze suddenly dark and heavy. “Has been for awhile. Take it— _me—_ however you please.” 

The notion that he’s been thinking of this perhaps as long as you have thrums in your chest, whites out your vision in a sudden, desperate madness. You want to _smell_ him, to press your face to his neck and inhale the rain from his skin, to lick over the cords in his throat, to suck his tongue until your chin is wet and he’s gasping. You want to flood your senses, but instead, you focus on dutifully stroking him, loving the shift of loose skin over the crown, the way he glistens and drips beneath the sweeping press of your thumb. He bucks into it, chasing the motion and meeting it halfway each time. “It feels good?” you ask him, because you have never done this and want to be sure. 

“So good,” he murmurs, making fists in the sheets, fucking your grip, urging you on. A smile flashes across his face then, that mouth splitting over sudden, joyful white. “Holy,” he repeats back to you, and you realize that you have _both_ forsaken your Creeds to stumble together here in a rain-choked, once-lonely bed on a planet no one else can see. Somehow, it feels fitting, and you nod against his shoulder with tears stilted in your throat. 

Then, he turns his head and presses his lips to your helmet to kiss it. To kiss _you._ His breath clouds his side of your visor, and between your combined exhalations, you cannot see when all you want is to see him. You think of his idleness, his party trick, and all the rules he has broken for you, breath strangled in a want you cannot sustain. You want so _much_. You want things you don’t have names for, and as you realize this, some brand of taut, invisible energy flickers to life between you. It crackles along your body, and for the first time, you feel what you think must be the Force. It was not a thing he invented, it’s _here,_ and it’s real, and it’s touching you as you touch him, strange and alien and lovely. 

You press your face to his, beskar to skin, breath to breath. “What do you want?” you ask him. “I’ll give it. Just tell me.” 

“Will you put your fingers inside me?” he chokes out, voice nothing but a delirious, hungry thing. “Please.” 

“Yes,” you promise, grip tightening as you feel him flex and twitch in your palm, like your words are enough to elicit pleasure. You rub needy fingers though the slickness beading at the crown, amazed by how _wet_ he is, how hot. “Show me.” 

He nods resolutely before glancing to the crude bedside table. You see him considering sitting up to grab something, but instead, he uses the Force to easily open a drawer and float a vial of oil into his fist. 

It is idle, and a party trick, and the knowledge he would use the Force for such a filthy thing after telling you that it is much looked down upon makes your gut twist in a fierce, animal love for him. “Use this,” he says, offering it to you. “It’ll make it easier. Wetter.” 

Your stomach drops as you uncap it, at first coating your fingers until they shine before taking his cock in hand, slicking him up until he is gasping and glistening. You love the feeling of him, drunk on his sensitivity, his moans. You’re not _entirely_ sure what you're supposed to be doing with this, though—where you’re supposed to be going, but he either senses your trepidation or gets impatient, because now he is guiding you the rest of the way there. “Here,” he murmurs, reaching down to encircle your wrist and push your fingers into the hot, sweat-damp crease of his ass. Then, he turns to rest his bent knee upon your hip, splitting himself, offering his body up to you like a ritual sacrifice. 

Your heart pounds madly against your breastbone as you prod at the hot flutter of muscle. “ _Ah_ , fuck,” he moans, brow grinding into your shoulder so that he can anchor himself. He rocks his hips, bears down. “Push inside.” 

You do, and so easily, he opens right up for you. A gasp chokes from your lips unexpectedly as you fuck into the burning heat of him, crooking your fingers, stunned by the maddening pulse of muscle as it hugs your knuckles, slick and burning. “Beautiful,” you say again as you feel him out, twisting deeper. “Feel so good inside.” 

“ _You_ feel so good,” he murmurs, lips parted in the picture of bliss. Just _looking at_ him, even obstructed, breaks your heart: the way his cheeks are stained red, the flutter of his eyelids, how his hair sticks to your visor with static cling. You want more, though. You want everything you can get away with. 

In a desperate attempt to shift closer, you bump against him with your helmet, working your fingers into the hot clutch of his body with experimental tenderness. He's so warm and so tight and so oil-slick, and it is both the filthiest and purest thing you have felt in the whole of your life. A reflexive moan escapes your lips and ricochets off the inside of your visor, but it comes out a sharp, desperate sound through the voice modulator, making his cock twitch against his stomach as he hears it, dripping into the space between you. He's touching himself, and you study the motion, the way he twists at the crown, the careful pressure, the steady speed. 

“Luke,” you say, because you want to hear his name. Because you want to suck on it until it dissolves into something sweet that you can swallow. Wrist aching, you press into the thud of his heartbeat, and the grip of his body flutters around your knuckles as he cries out. 

“Don’t stop,” he whimpers, voice choppy and strained. “Just—just like that. Just touch me.” 

And you settle into the rhythm of it, time slowing down into something honey-sweet, and sticky. “I won’t stop,” you promise, fucking deeper, punching a breathy groan from him. “I got you.” 

And you do. You roll him onto his back and work another finger inside him, pressing in deep at the angle that makes his thigh muscles quake, rubbing insistently over every inch of him, kneading and crooking to see what he likes. You want to _know_ —you want to _study it,_ so that you can replicate it. So that you can make him feel this way over and over again, if he will have you. Luckily, he is easy to read—so loud and responsive, his cock leaking and flexing in his own hand whenever something feels especially good. 

You didn’t know sex was so raw…so _intimate._ It seemed dirty and awkward and not worth your time in the past, but that was only because you were thinking about it from the perspective of a man who had not loved—who had not _wanted._ Your want is a scorching, suffocating thing now, and you cannot get _enough_ of Luke. You want this to go on forever, you want to memorize and catalogue every sound he makes, every tilt of his hips, every spasm of his abdominals, until your fingers are puckered and pale from the wet heat of him. There is nothing about this that does not move you. You love how his body holds you _inside_ sometimes, clenching vice-tight and sucking around the girth of your knuckles. But you also love how he’ll get slack, pulsing and releasing until he’s a soft, willing thing, and you can quicken the pace, driving into him relentlessly as he chokes a mess of profanity into the fabric bunched around your neck. 

He has you _desperately_ hard. Your is cock straining against the fabric of your pants so tightly that it’s almost painful, and you _cannot_ control your breath, your hunger. You cannot remember ever having felt like this—your desire was quiet and unassuming, and it rarely built to something urgent. But with Luke, it’s alive and dangerous, consuming you like wildfire, eating away at your composure until you’ve gone mad, rutting against his thigh, taking pleasure from witnessing _his_ pleasure, as if his body is an extension of yours.

Gradually, your logic crumbles alongside your self-possession, both are lost to the searing grip of his body around your fingers. You want to taste his lips. You want to see him without a barrier. You want to press your mouth to the curve of his cheekbone, the thunder of his pulse. You want to lick up the obscene wet beading from the slit of his cock and swallow it down until you are choking. You want to inhale the ghost of rain from his hair, sweat from the secret crease under his arm. You want, and you want, and you _want_ , and eventually, you cannot remember what could _possibly_ be more important than having these things. _This_ is your Creed. This is The Way. 

You curse in Mando’a and withdraw from the unbearable heat of Luke’s body long enough to release your helmet with a hiss and pull it over your head. 

The air is cold on your burning cheeks, and his eyes are the palest, most impossible blue as you finally regard them up close. “Fuck,” he says as he stares at you, blinking before reaching up with tremulous fingers and pausing just short of touching your skin. “There you are,” he breathes, tongue passing over the irresistible pink of his lips, gaze darkening, flickering. 

And there are so many things about him that the visor does not do justice. His hair is lighter than you realized—streaked through with golden blond, glittering like the sun on Tatooine. And then there’s the way he _smells._ His gales of hungry, salty breath. The spice-bite of his sweat. Your fingers tremble as you touch his hair, his cheek, his lips. “Din,” he breathes, and at the sound of your name, something rears and cracks. 

You press your face to his neck and suck in a desperate lungful of the skin there. He’s soft against your lips, blood rushing, breath gasping, warm and alive and wonderful. Without even meaning to, your tongue flicks out to taste the brine-sweet scald of his sweat. “May I kiss you?” you rasp. 

And his laugh rumbles beneath your lips as he drags tentative hands through your mussed hair and pulls you up to look at. “Yes,” he says, eyes sapphire-bright, like sky diluted in sun. “Yes, yes, yes.” 

At that, you press your mouth to his, and seal his breath. 

There is fire and there is lava, there’s the spit-wet mess of his tongue amid the gales of breath. There is Luke, and Luke alone, the heat of him and the scent of him and his taste like a drug, dizzying as you lick into his mouth over and over. His thighs spread, and you fumble between them again, pumping his cock a few times with your fingers tangled in his before you reach lower and press back inside him again, swallowing his subsequent groan. 

The galaxy dissolves around you as you fuck him open on your fingers. There is nothing but this. He tugs on his cock and sucks your tongue, and you think that you could go on forever like his, but too soon, he’s crying out, head falling back, face a ruin. He spills in pearly ribbons onto the heave of his chest, hole spasming madly around your fingers as you push deep, gaze locked on him with the intent of immortalizing this moment inside your mind so that you may carry it, come anything. You will keep it like a treasure. Like a tattoo. 

“That’s it,” you murmur against his gasping mouth. “I got you. I got you.” 

He softens, boneless under you with come on his chest. You can _smell_ it alongside his clean sweat as you inhale, the organic, bitter bite at the back of your throat. And under normal circumstances, this might overwhelm you, but you suck it in, realizing that sensory overload where Luke is concerned is, for the first time ever, a welcome thing. You want to drown in him, so you do. 

You kiss, and you kiss, soft and sweet at first until he puts his teeth in it and gets you dirty again, pulling you down so that your breastplate smears the mess on his chest into his skin. All the while, he touches you tentatively—fingers in your hair, curled at the back of your neck, or else clutched around the armor on your shoulder. “You can—here,” you mumble, shutting your eyes and pressing into the warmth of his palm. “I want you to.” 

Something awe-bright flickers across his eyes as he traces the lines of your face tentatively, with imploring fingertips. He studies you as he touches, hands too gentle but certain as he thumbs over your cheekbones, your mustache, your brows. And you have never—nothing’s felt like this in the whole of your life. A raw nerve, stripped bare and bleeding, but at the same time, profoundly absolving _._ Stitched back together. “It doesn’t actually matter to me,” Luke murmurs, cupping your face and drawing you close enough to kiss your brow. “But you should know that you are _so_ fucking handsome.” Then he pushes his thigh between yours, pressing insistently against where you are hard and desperate and throbbing. “I could use my mouth on you,” he mutters, licking sweat from your hairline with a flick of his tongue. “Or my hands. Whatever you want. I’m yours.” 

You shake your head, coughing on a strangled laugh. It’s overwhelming to think of any of that, to consider the possibilities. You’re daunted by the task of moving, arranging yourself into the appropriate position, allowing yourself to be so _vulnerable_ and wanting. What you _truly_ want is _this:_ his hands in your hair, his lips within kissing distance, his naked body spread out beneath you as you touch him, and touch him, needy and blind. 

You mouth over his cheek, inhaling from his skin as you rock down deliberately into the plane of his bare thigh. “Can I—just like this?” you ask. 

“Ah—fuck. Yes,” he groans, rolling fully onto his back and dragging you with him, until the bulk of your body crushes him into the mattress, and it whines beneath your combined weight. He spread his thighs, skin still glistening in the obscene shine of come, cock soft and vulnerable and pink again his stomach. “Wherever you want. However you want.” 

You press your brow to his and get lost in kissing him, in grinding against the willing give of his body. He’s already come, but he still ruts along with your motion, roving greedy palms over your back, your arms where they brace on either side of him, hands buried wrist-deep in his hair. You can feel yourself drawing closer as you swallow his moans, and he must sense it, too, because he smooths a palm down your side, beneath the jut of your chestplate and to the waistband of your pants. “I—I’d like to feel the heat of you, when you finish. If you let me. Through your clothes is fine,” he murmurs. 

It seems simple enough, so you nod, letting him grapple between your bodies until his burning palm is spread wide and firm enough that you can grind into the heel of his hand. “Fuck, yes, Din,” he murmurs into your kisses, fingers curled in the sweat-wreck of your hair. “Like that.” 

The sensation builds, flickers, and eventually boils over as you spend against the pressure of his cupped hand, emptying yourself in hot, sticky pulses into your clothes as your vision whites out. You cannot help a crushed groan from escaping your lips, and he gasps at the sound, like it moves him to hear what he’s done to you. 

Eventually, the static fades, and you find yourself collapsed and panting beside him while he studies you, stroking your cheek, the flicker of your pulse, pressing kiss after kiss to the perspiration-dewy plane of your temple. “Do you want your helmet back?” he asks when your gaze shifts up to hold his. Blue and blue and _more_ fucking blue, until there is nothing else. 

You reach out and touch his lips. Then, you smile at him. No one has ever seen your smile before, and it feels like a revelation, like a fledgeling, like dawn. 

“Not yet,” you decide, before pulling him down to kiss. 

—-

Seasons change, grey becomes gold, and though the rainstorms do not cease on Yavin IV, they come far less frequently in the summer. When they do, they are light and sparse and warm, so Grogu chases the fat droplets, or else stands with his head tilted back and his mouth open to catch them. He laughs, and meditates, and his powers come far easier, these days. Your presence is not needed to coax him into cooperating for Luke anymore, so sometimes you charter a ship and take a job on the outer rim for old time’s sake. Your contacts on Nevarro make sure they’re surefire, fish-in-a-barrel types of gigs because they know you have a family now and don’t have the luxury of pursuing danger the same way you used to. They all joke about you missing it, but the thing is, you _don’t._

You ache when you are away from Yavin IV because everything you’ve grown to love is there, tucked away beneath the lush green canopy, restoring sandstone to its former glory. Your new Creed—your new life.

Still, you travel where you need to go, and you shoot who you must, pocketing only the credits you need to get back home. Luke does not ask questions, and when you return, you lay your gloved palm upon the worry of his brow and thumb it to smoothness. “Hey,” you say on the nights he digs his nails in, and you can feel the Force flickering with how very badly he wishes you would stay permanently and indefinitely. “M’here, now. I got you. I got you.” 

And if you say it enough times, he softens into your arms. You hope he believes it, because it’s true. There are things you don’t know, wounds that will never heal—but. You’ve got him, and you think in the end, after all the blaster fire you’ve both seen, that’s the quiet ending you both deserve. 

Sometimes you still sleep beside him in your armor, but other times, you do not. You learn the feeling of his palms under your tunic, his mouth on every inch of your skin bared to the heavy humidity of the night. And he uses the Force for absurd, silly things, and he loves you with his whole fierce and unabated heart. You’re both wrecking who you used to be and emerging from a chrysalis, and that’s alright, you think. Together, you break rules. Together, you make new ones. 

And you leave for the stars when you must, but always, _always_ , you come back. Sometimes with new foundlings in tow, other Force-sensitive children your heart now draws to you like scrap metal to a magnetic field. You never know how you find them, but they seek you out like there’s some invisible honing beacon Luke’s attached to you with his kisses. Like the energy that clings to your armor announces throughout the galaxy that you can take frightened kids somewhere safe and hidden. 

So, you do. Luke’s single student becomes two, which become three, which become seven. When you are alone, he still says he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but you watch scared, lonely kids become brave and powerful and calm in the same soul-stitching way he is, and so you tell him for the hundredth time: _you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing,_ with your palms cupping the shape of his face, tracing the dark circles beneath his eyes. Always, he will smile the uncertain, lopsided version of his smile and kiss you after this. Either your helmet, or your mouth, depending on what you are capable of exposing that night. He never pushes for more than what you are in that second, and for that, you are terribly grateful. 

Sometimes you still sleep beside him in your armor, but other times, you do not. And you leave for the stars when you must, but always, _always,_ you come back.

Life carries on this way, until it is Your Way. It is perhaps not _The_ Way, but you’re not even sure there _is_ some universal, prescriptive truth anymore. Maybe every living thing is struggling to survive as it sees fit, and all you can do is fumble along in the direction that brings your heart the most joy, and comfort. So, upon your armored and rain-drunk planet that you’ve built with your Jedi and your son, you plant something. It is new and nameless and fresh and green and fragile, but it grows, and it grows. 

—— 


End file.
